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When it comes to health, where you live really matters.

That was one of the key messages delivered by Dr. Karen DeSalvo at the 2019 McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Lectureship on February 22 at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where she received the annual Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine.

Dr. DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Population Health at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. She served as acting assistant secretary for health at the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Obama Administration.

Prior to joining HHS, she served as New Orleans Health Commissioner, where she led efforts to address health challenges, including violence, nutritional and physical fitness and mental health, and led the re-establishment of a community public hospital.

Throughout the United States and in cities like New Orleans and Indianapolis, communities have “zip code health” challenges in which health and life expectancy data varies widely based on geography. Social determinants of health, including clean air and water, housing, transportation, tobacco and alcohol use, drug abuse, sexual activity, education and employment have more impact than almost any other factors in quality of health.

“Fixing gaps like this will take more than a great health care system,” Dr. DeSalvo said. “Health is more than healthcare.”

Following Dr. DeSalvo’s lecture, Ross Silverman, IU McKinney Professor of Law and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI, introduced a panel discussion.

The panel included Daniel S. Goldberg, J.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine/Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver; Jay Chaudhary, J.D., Managing Attorney and Director Medical Legal Partnerships, Indiana Legal Services; and Pamela Pontones, M.A., Deputy Health Commissioner and State Epidemiologist, Indiana State Department of Health.

IU McKinney, in conjunction with the Indiana University School of Medicine, sponsors the annual McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Lectureship and Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine. Supported by a bequest to the two schools, this lectureship and award brings leading scholars and policy makers in the fields of law and medicine to the Indianapolis campus for the benefit of students, faculty, the bar and the medical community.

The inaugural program was held in November 1994. Award recipients and their articles are listed below.  Articles based on the lectures presented were published in the Indiana Law Review until 2002, at which time the lectures started being published in the Indiana Health Law Review.